Once, people would have given back money that wasn't rightfully theirs. How times have changed

Do you remember a time when a person finding a wallet full of cash in the street would do his best to trace its owner and return it? Or when somebody given too much change by a shopkeeper would hand it back rather than pocket it? In other words, do you remember a time when people were predominantly honest?

Yesterday's newspapers reported that people queued around the block at a cash machine in Hull when word got out that it was dispensing twice as much money as they had asked for. But the papers did not suggest there was anything wrong in this mass bank robbery. On the contrary, they seemed to wish the robbers luck.

Admittedly, a cash machine is an impersonal thing. To steal money from it is not like stealing an old lady's handbag. It is more like operating a fruit machine. But it is theft all the same, and theft used to be something of which respectable citizens disapproved. No longer.

One witness, who didn't appear to be taking money out of the machine himself, nevertheless wished the robbers well. "It was really funny seeing all those people trying to get one over on the banks," he was reported as saying. "It makes up for all the bank charges, I guess. I hope they don't have to pay it back."

This hinted at one of the reasons why those queuing up at the cash machine outside Sainsbury's felt not the slightest guilt about their larceny. People don't trust banks; and, with reason, they believe that they rip them off. They also may suspect that their bank is about to go under and take their savings with them.

But there is more to it than that. There is a widespread feeling that money is now mainly acquired by luck rather than effort. You marry a Beatle, you stumble into celebrity, you wangle a job in the City, and suddenly you're rich.

What is there for the rest of us but to seize our chances when we may? The fact that this may involve dishonesty is not a consideration, provided there is little risk of being caught.

· As Barack Obama noted this week in his magnificent speech in Philadelphia, "I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas ... I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slave-owners ... I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents". If he can turn this background into an electoral asset - as one would wish it to be when the fate of America is now so inextricably tied up with the rest of the world - it will be a stunning achievement.

The senator said last week that he didn't think anyone would put his name on a list of his assets as a presidential candidate, but it may well be that his name has greatly contributed to his drive to succeed. This is on the principle, set out in Johnny Cash's song A Boy Named Sue, that an awful name forces you to do well in life. As Sue's father, pleading for his life, explained to his son in the song: "I knew you'd have to get tough or die, and it's the name that helped to make you strong."

Obama's mother was very strong and of remarkably independent mind. The daughter of a furniture salesman from Kansas, she married first a Kenyan, then an Indonesian, worked for the Ford Foundation and the US Agency for International Development in Jakarta, and for banks both in Indonesia and New York. There was much else she did before dying of cancer at 52, but the point I want to make here is that her first name was Stanley. Her father called her that because he had always wanted a son. I rest my case.

· Last week, while staying in Lucerne, I ascended its two famous mountains, the Pilatus and the Rigi, following the example of Queen Victoria who did the same 140 years ago. But I went up them in cable cars, while she did so on her pony, Flora, which would have been much more wearisome.

The Queen, though constantly complaining about her health, showed great energy and stamina during her stay in Switzerland, her first holiday since the death of Prince Albert had left her desolate seven years earlier. Not only did she ride her pony up and down mountains that are 2,132 metres (6,995ft) and 1,828 metres (6,000ft) high; she sailed daily on the lake, sketched and painted, and went on many sightseeing expeditions in her pony trap.

I, by contrast, did very little.

More impressive still was Lord Stanley, the British foreign secretary sent out to Lucerne to keep an eye on the Queen, who was there incognito as the "Countess of Kent" in a vain attempt at anonymity. Stanley climbed the Pilatus on foot, going up and down it in seven hours, and later wrote that he "was glad to find that two years of sedentary life had left me able to face a steep hill without discomfort". "In general, I have found that 1,200 feet vertical rise per hour is fair work, allowing for irregularities of ground," he added.

Obsessed though we are today with health and diet, I don't think that many modern foreign secretaries are as fit as that.

· This week Alexander read Mr Justice Bennett's judgment on the McCartney divorce settlement: "I was depressed to find that, though Paul and Heather had clearly once loved each other, Paul now recognised only one good thing about his wife: her 'terrific' idea that he acquire an acrylic fingernail." Alexander admired Henry Fuseli's paintings at the Kunsthaus in Zürich.